If you are about to emigrate you will be doing so for one of two reasons: your work or your lifestyle.
If you are about to emigrate you will be doing so for one of two reasons: your work or your lifestyle.
If you are leaving to work full-time abroad, it is relatively easy, given certain conditions, to shed your UK tax residence and receive non UK sourced income free of UK tax. The key issue to consider here is how much income you will continue to generate from the UK (from rent and other investments). Our objective will be to keep your foreign earnings wholly outside the scope of UK income tax and for you to remain subject to UK income tax only on your UK income, whilst keeping a keen eye on the impact on your pension.
It is much harder to gain non-residence status if you leave the UK for lifestyle reasons (usually tax or retirement-related). This will often require you to sever your links with the UK including your home, and for your spouse or civil partner and minor children to move with you.
Once these initial issues have been covered, we’ll need to consider the relative impact of income, inheritance and capital gains tax before looking at the future impact on your estate.
Effective from 6th April 2025, once an individual has been a UK tax resident for 10 years, their global estate is within UK Inheritance Tax (‘IHT’). If they go non resident, they can escape this global exposure but if they have been a UK resident for e.g. twenty years and then leave, they remain within UK IHT compliance on death until they have been not UK tax resident for 10 years. If they leave after 10 years, the exposure to IHT or their global estate ceases once they not been UK resident for three UK tax years.
ROBERT SCHON PLANNING AND TAX ADVICE 